“The ways of spirit are not the ways of sacrifice, but rather a way of opening yourself fully to the infinite glories of the universe.”
–Marianne Williamson, The Law of Divine Compensation (p.2)
When I initially read this line from Marianne Williamson’s book my first thought was “hmm, that’s interesting.” Then I thought about it for a few seconds and my next thought was, “Actually I think that’s wrong.”
That second thought has led to this piece. I want to explore why I think it’s wrong to write off spiritual sacrifice altogether.
Sacrifice. It’s a word with an incredible amount of baggage. It’s a word that’s been used and misused for centuries. It’s old school in the worst sense. The misuse and abuse of sacrifice in spirituality deserves all the criticism it’s received of late.
I’m going to argue that there is a positive aspect to sacrifice (when rightly understood). Statements like Williamson’s above, which I see as very dominant in our contemporary spiritual world, are causing us to lose the true meaning of sacrifice.
Admittedly the history of our religious traditions is that they have overemphasized and hugely overplayed the hand of negative, dehumanizing sacrifice. The pendulum for centuries was locked in one direction but now has come crashing back too far in the other.
There is a middle way here–one that charts a path of wisdom beyond the extremes of dehumanizing sacrifice and *only* the infinite glories of the universe on the other.
To ground this argument we need to make a distinction between unhealthy, destructive, and dehumanizing forms of sacrifice and healthy, life-giving, and humanizing forms of sacrifice. If that distinction turns out to be false, then this whole argument I’m trying to make falls apart. If however we find there is the potential for constructive, healthy sacrifice, then the binary set up in the quotation above between spiritual sacrifice (seen as wholly negative) and opening ourself fully to the infinite glories of the universe (seen as wholly positive) will crumble. And if that dualism crumbles, then much will be destroyed in its wake.
So here is my short hand definitions for negative and positive (or perhaps better unhealthy and healthy) forms of sacrifice.
Unhealthy, Dehumanizing Sacrifice
In this form of sacrifice there is something deeply valuable and intrinsic to my being. I’m told by my spiritual teaching I have to give this valuable part of myself up in order to be a truly spiritual person. This deeply valuable piece might be my voice, my power, my emotions, my bodily desires, my gender, perhaps even my fundamental sense of self.
I’m supposed to sacrifice one or more of these parts of myself in order to prove I’m not selfish. I sacrifice these fundamental elements of my being in order to prove to God–or whatever spiritual authority claims to speak on God’s behalf–that I love God more than I love myself.
The act of sacrificing these parts of myself is painful and I don’t enjoy it but somehow through gritted teeth I keep pushing through. This form of sacrifice is often tied to the glorification of suffering–the more I suffer by sacrificing authentic parts of myself, the more spiritual I’ve shown myself to be.
This form of spiritual sacrifice is admittedly by far the majority. While I disagree substantially with Marianne Williamson’s quotation above, I can sympathize with why she said it. This dehumanizing form of spiritual sacrifice has sadly dominated so much of the spiritual path, particularly in the Western world (though by no means exclusively in the Western world).
Still I don’t think sacrifice should be jettisoned altogether. Deep in my bones I believe there’s another form of sacrifice, one being disregarded, one that we need.
Healthy, Life-Giving Sacrifice
“I am being poured out as a libation on the altar of the world.” –St. Paul
This utterly profound statement from St. Paul teaches us what is the path of life-giving sacrifice.
We are vessels. We are chalices of the divine. Each vessel has its own unique flavor of the spirit(s). We are to freely, of our own volition, pour out our wine to the last drop. We are not to do so because there is something fundamentally disordered about our bodies, our emotions, our desires, our humanness. Quite the opposite in fact. These are all part of our chalice–even the chipped, faded, and broken pieces of the chalice. We are meant to pour this wine of our being out as a gift, an offering.
In many ancient cults, wine was poured on an altar, on a fire, as a gift to the gods. St. Paul is playing on this image by saying rather that we are the gods who must give to Life itself. The altar of holiness is creation herself. This is where we are meant to pour out the wine of our essence.
The sacrifice is meant to occur not as a form of punishment nor as a form of spiritual heroics. We don’t earn brownie points with our Maker.
True sacrifice is true because life is a giving, fruitful act. The reason to (correctly) sacrifice ourselves spiritually is so that we would truly live.
Williamson sets up a false dualism between sacrifice and the glories of the universe. In actual fact, the glories of the universe exist because everything gives off its fullness to the last drop. A supernova exploded and gave forth her cosmic entrails so that we might have a solar system. Mothers give of their very bodily existence, their blood, milk, and tissue to generate life. Life feeds on life. This is a holy thing–if not always totally pleasant. In other words, opening ourselves fully to the glories of the universe is itself a sacrificial spiritual act.
The word sacrifice means an act that make something holy.
If we say that the spiritual path does not involve sacrifice, then we are saying it does not involve holiness. Sacrifice, rightly understood, is the only way to make (or perhaps better) reveal the holy.
To walk the path of drinking up the fullness of the glories of the universe is a beautiful way. It however leads to the realization that we are called to give our distilled essence as a sacred offering. As we have been gifted, so we gift in return.
Where unhealthy sacrifice is tied up in suffering, healthy sacrifice is intimately linked to surrender as the proper response to grace. In surrender we find ourselves overwhelmed by Love, forgiven, redeemed, love and embraced beyond all words, measure, or understanding. In response to this overwhelming love, we have nothing to do but say that we surrender, affirming our deepest allegiance to The Lord, Love Herself.
Sacrifice however goes one step further than surrender. Sacrifice is surrender made concrete and real in action in daily life (sacrifice in that regard is very akin to submission, another scary spiritual ‘s’ word).
Without surrender, spiritual sacrifice seems, perhaps inexorably, to veer into its unhealthy and dehumanizing form. Sacrifice without surrender as a response to grace is trying to earn divine brownie points when in truth there’s no such counting system to be found.
When sacrifice comes out of surrender, then we freely choose to walk the way of pouring out the wine of our beings. The wine is the spirit, that which gives life. Each of us has a distinct flavor which we call soul. We give both to the fullest.
This conscious self-giving action, flowing from surrender, is the healthy, true form of sacrifice. It is an absolutely vital act for a full, conscious, spiritual practice.
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* Though this isn’t the primary emphasis of the piece, it should be noted that the book from which this quotation of Marianne Williamson’s comes describes itself as “a path to material abundance through immaterial means, and a set of spiritual keys to worldly power (p.2).” In fact that’s the sentence that immediately precedes the quotation I cited above. A spiritual path that completely denies the value of any and all sacrifice, will led to this kind of statement about using spirituality to gain material abundance and spiritual keys to worldly power. I just want to note that’s an inevitable consequence of denying sacrifice altogether.